In the interests of safety many modern automotive vehicles include hands free communication units allowing an occupant of the vehicle to place and receive cellular telephone calls without having to take a hand off the steering wheel. The hands free communication unit includes microphones or microphone arrays placed within the passenger compartment of the vehicle to receive the audio signals from the occupant. In addition, the hands free communication unit is often connected to the vehicle's audio speaker system allowing the occupant to listen to the person on the other side of the telephone call through the vehicle speakers.
The hands free communication unit is either wired or wirelessly connected to the occupant's cellular telephone such that the occupant can participate in the telephone conversation through the microphone and audio speakers.
Further, as voice recognition technology has advanced, many hands free communication units utilize a voice recognition engine to allow an occupant to control the cellular telephone through vocal commands. The voice recognition engine allows the occupant to initiate telephone calls, dial telephone numbers, and answer incoming calls. The voice recognition engine is often coupled with a navigation system integrated into the vehicle, thereby allowing an occupant to input a route destination through vocal commands. The integration of the voice recognition engine and the navigation system is an important safety feature as the vehicle occupant is now able to input a destination into the navigation system without diverting attention from the road while manually inputting the destination information into the navigation system.
However, the safety benefits of this system are only available when the driver is aware of the actual destination. Oftentimes, a driver may be already driving when the driver is notified of the exact destination address. This often occurs during a telephone call where the person on the other side of the telephone conversation informs the driver of the destination address. The driver is then required to attempt to memorize the destination address or write the address down prior to inputting it into the navigation system. In both instances the driver's attention is severely distracted in either memorizing or writing the destination address.
Previously known systems such as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0036586 filed Jun. 5, 2007, discloses a system and method for receiving navigational data via a wireless messaging service such as a short message service (“SMS”). In this system, the navigation system connects to the driver's cellular telephone and searches through the received messages to determine if a message contains a navigation destination such as an address, a telephone number, or an email address. However, this system is limited in that the driver must receive the address through the wireless messaging system. As such, in order to obtain a destination, a driver participating in a telephone conversation is required to request the party on the other side of the conversation to send a message containing the address. This is particularly problematic when attempting to obtain the address of a commercial establishment in that the party on the other side of the conversation is required to take the driver's telephone number or email address and input the destination address into a wireless message.
Thus there exists a need for an improved navigational system capable of extracting a destination from voice data uttered by the party of the telephone conversation located remote from the vehicle.